


Death, Come Near Me

by darth_vaporwave



Series: The Inner Light Series [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dream Sequence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22036507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darth_vaporwave/pseuds/darth_vaporwave
Summary: After the battle of Crait, Kylo Ren dreams of what he's destroyed.
Series: The Inner Light Series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586164
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Death, Come Near Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prologue of sorts for a much longer fic I'm working on. It begins right after TLJ, which is when I started writing it. 
> 
> Title from Draconian's song of the same name, because I'm that original.

_I’ll see you around kid_

Luke was gone. Kylo felt it, like a gentle exhale, like the inexorable opening of a void as the ground crumbled into yawning darkness.

In the night he dreamed; dreamed of Han Solo falling into an endless well of brightness; dreamed of the bloody wounds scoured in the salt of Crait and the empty silence in that blackened mine shaft; dreamed of Luke fading into smoke and the vibrating strike of plasma up his own arm as the lightsaber blades met over the salt, in the falling snow. Light broke across the lines in Luke’s face, the white sunlight that streamed across Crait like broken glass; blue and red plasma lit Rey’s face; in the snow and the salt he was fighting with everything that burned him from the inside out, that wanted to burn him to ash, but he fell and he fell, like Han Solo disappearing into a speck in the light.

There was no light here. It was dark and cold. He pressed his hands against the ice, floating in the black freezing water, Luke’s absence a hole in the Force that would never fill, his father an echoing, throbbing silence, his mother sparkling like the light on the tide at sunrise, and at her edges a blazing corona that had come streaking through empty space right to him and left him lying in flaming rubble surrounded by the dead.

He beat against the ice, kicked ferociously, pushed all his hatred and loathing and that resolve that Snoke had claimed to see calcifying in his heart; screamed, black water flowing into his mouth, air pressing out of his lungs--

Above the ice, beyond the veil of the frost, a blue-white light blazed in the darkness. A boot sole pressed down in the halo of light, and a pale hand scraped the frost away. Rey’s face, lit blue and flickering in the shadows of the blade, her dark hair hanging over her shoulder, stared down at him.

“ _Why_ ,” she said, her voice muffled through the ice, crackling through him like an electric shock.

He scraped at the ice, splitting his nails, the blood bright in the plasma-light before it unfurled into the black water.

 _LET ME OUT_ he screamed, the water freezing in his mouth.

Her face was warped by the ice, unclear. She did not turn away; she did not cut him out. He tore his nails on the ice beneath her palm.

In the saber-light, the darkness behind her moved. A black shape, stepping into the blaze of blue light, black cowl and cloak and a sliver of pale face. A hand came to rest on the hers shoulder, mechanized, digits clicking.

 _Luke_ , he thought, pressing against the ice, his heart thundering with heat and cold as he froze through and through.

The dark shape leaned over her shoulder, and the light crawled across wires, shards of metal, a burning empty eye, scars, split skin.

The ghost of Darth Vader stared at him through the ice, his hand on Rey’s shoulder, the burning glow of Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber breaking them into planes of planes of light and shadow.

_See you around, kid_

Rey raised the saber overhead and plunged it through the ice.

Kylo awoke before it went through his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Vaderkin ghost cameo - my favorite!


End file.
